Master of Science in Plant Biotechnology

The global demand for plant-derived products such as feed and food is increasing dramatically, as illustrated by the recent doubling of the price of most commodity crops. How can we deal with these exponentially growing demands for food, feed and bio-energy? How can we cope with the fact that we will have to produce more food on less arable land, under environmentally more challenging conditions? These are just a few questions to be solved by the modern plant biotechnology.
The training in plant biotechnology is embedded in an environment of top science and industrial entrepreneurship where translational research enables the transfer of knowledge from plant models to crops. If you choose to study at Ghent University, you will be studying at the largest Agro-Biotech Campus in Europe.

Opbouw

The curriculum covers all aspects of modern plant biotechnology related to state of the art technologies, plant growth and development, abiotic stress and biotic interactions, intellectual property and safety regulation. Moreover, through elective courses and a substantial master's dissertation, students can specialise in their field of interest.

Arbeidsmarkt

Ghent University in collaboration with the Flemish Institute for Biotechnology (VIB) has a long standing tradition of converting basic plant science into successful industrial entities: Plant Genetics Systems (now Bayer Cropsciences), CropDesign (now BASF Plant Sciences), Devgen and more recently Solucel. Today, these companies together with our plant research center form the largest European Plant Biotechnology campus. Both our companies and research labs are continuously recruiting talented people for research positions.